McCarthy's The Road (Post 1, Question 6)

6. What other remarks might you have about the books? Questions? Observations? Reactions?

While I was reading The Road by Cormac McCarthy, I found one of the major themes of the novel to be "Good vs. Evil". For example, the Man and Boy call themselves "the good guys", and that they're "carrying the fire". In the book, the word fire is usually intended as a metaphor, usually used by the Man, to describe the small bit of good, hope, and happiness left on Earth, which is them. Since literal, physical fire can spread, I think the Man is hoping that they can change all bad and return the world to how it was before the apocalypse.
On the other hand, the cannibals in this post-apocalyptic society are the "evil" ones, who have given up on all of their previous morals and have done terrible things in order to survive.

I found it very interesting when the couple's themes of "being good guys" and "carrying the fire" collided. Since the Man's only goal for the rest of his life was to protect the Boy, they did whatever they had to do in order to survive and make it down to the South before winter, however, a number of these things involved doing terrible acts. For example, they left the Old Man by himself to die in the road. They even considered not feeding or talking to him at all. They didn't help the people trapped in the basement, being stored for meat.
But perhaps the most emotional of these events is when they caught the thief that stole their cart. Was the man really being the good guy when he made the starving "scrawny, sullen, bearded, filthy" thief strip naked in Winter, in revenge of stealing their items? They had to do anything to carry the fire, but they couldn't have helped a poor man not unlike them when they had a cart full of clothing and food? I felt really bad for the thief after the conversation between the man and boy:
"What do you want to do?
Just help him, Papa. Just help him.
The man looked back up the road.
He was just hungry, Papa. He's going to die.
He's going to die anyway.
He's so scared, Papa."

Was the Man doing bad or good when he left the thief, who had stolen all their food and clothes, out in the Road to die of the cold?

-Andrew Suzuki